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Mysore city emerging as alternative IT destination

HI-TECH CENTRE: A view of Wipro's Global Service Management Centre that was inaugurated in Mysore on Thursday. Photo: M.A. Sriram

Staff Correspondent

Wipro opens Global Service Management Centre at Metagalli

MYSORE: That Mysore was slowly, but steadily emerging as an alternative IT destination in Karnataka became apparent on Thursday when IT major Wipro followed software major Infosys in setting up shop in the city.

Wipro announced its arrival in Mysore by setting up its Global Service Management Centre (GSMC) at Metagalli to provide integrated remote service delivery across applications and infrastructure for its clients in India, West Asia and Asia-Pacific.

To start with, 120 professionals are operating out of the 24/7 GSMC facility across three shifts, catering to customers spread across different time zones in West Asia and Asia-Pacific, besides India. "In about a year's time, we are expected to reach a staff strength of 400 professionals," a staff member from Wipro told The Hindu.

With its Biometric Security Devices, Password Vaults and Data Encryption, apart from a connectivity of 10 MB bandwidth for a secure tunnel with customers, the GSMC stands out as a state-of-the-art IT facility in Mysore.

"It is only a matter of time that Mysore's landscape will the dotted with a number of IT companies," Secretary to the Department of Industries and Commerce Lakshmi Venkatachalam told a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Mysore recently.

Experts in the IT industry in Mysore opine that that an increase in the number of IT companies will also usher in a new professional culture and allied businesses. "It will lead to all-round development of the economy in the city."

Wipro's staff strength, which is expected to reach 400 in about a year's time, will add to the growing number of IT professionals in the city, estimated to be around 8,000, including 4,500 in Infosys alone.

The spin-off benefits of the entry of IT industry into Mysore include the opening up of job avenues for skilled graduates. President of Wipro Infotech Suresh Vaswani said the company would prefer to recruit locals for their facility in Mysore. "Almost 70 per cent of the engineers already recruited for the GSMC are from Mysore," he said. But, the company's Professional Services Division Chief Executive Thandava Murthy made it clear that they would look at entry level recruits from Mysore and later scale them up the company's echelons.

Mr. Murthy said the company would soon engage the institutions in Mysore so that the talent and qualification required by Wipro's facilities in Mysore would be imbibed in the students.

Infosys and Wipro are not the only ones lending an IT touch to Mysore. Home grown Software Paradigms India (SPI) is planning a massive 2 lakh sq ft campus in Hebbal on the outskirts of the city.